How the Bitcoin forks went
Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin Gold each split from the chain claiming to be the real Bitcoin. Here is what happened next — measured in dollars, and then in bitcoin, which is the question they actually posed.
| Asset | Forked from | Fork date | Peak | Now | From peak | vs Bitcoin | 30d vol |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | — | — | $124,753 | $86,384 | -30.8% | — | 41% |
| Bitcoin Cash | Bitcoin | 2017-08-01 | $3,923 | $269.46 | -93.1% | -96.6% | 75% |
| Bitcoin SV | Bitcoin Cash | 2018-11-15 | $441.39 | $18.98 | -95.7% | -98.0% | 62% |
| Bitcoin Gold | Bitcoin | 2017-10-24 | $453.45 | $0.55 | -99.9% | -100.0% | 189% |
* Bitcoin Gold's volatility measures an asset that has largely stopped trading, not a market. See the note below.
Priced in bitcoin
Each fork's value in BTC, rebased to 100 at its listing. A line at 4 means the fork has lost 96% against Bitcoin since it began trading. This is the comparison that matters: the dollar is removed, so what remains is the market's verdict on the claim each fork made.
Download this data (CSV) — the numbers behind the chart, so you can check the work.
In dollars, from a common start
All four rebased to 100 at 2018-11-09 — the date the last of them began trading — so nobody gets a head start. Log axis.
How to read it
A fork copies the entire history of the chain up to the split, so on day one every holder of Bitcoin held an equal balance of the new coin. What each fork was worth afterwards was decided entirely by the market. Priced in bitcoin, all three have fallen by 96% or more.
How it's calculated
Daily closes for each asset. The bitcoin-denominated series is simply the fork's dollar price divided by Bitcoin's on the same day, then rebased to 100 at the fork's first trading day. The dollar chart rebases all four at 2018-11-09, the latest of the four listing dates, so the comparison starts on equal terms.
What it doesn't tell you
Price is not the only measure of a chain — hashrate, node count and actual usage all matter, and none are shown here. Prices before a fork was widely listed are thin and unreliable.
Bitcoin Gold in particular has stopped having a functioning market. Its closes swing 0.24 → 0.20 → 0.25 → 0.36 within a week, and the record contains single-day moves of +492%, +385% and +345%. The volatility figure in the table is arithmetically correct but is measuring illiquidity, not risk in any tradeable sense. No major exchange in our data set still lists it.
How to read it
Four assets that all claim descent from the same white paper, priced against the one that kept the name. Each fork was launched on the argument that it was the real Bitcoin and that the original had taken a wrong turn — so the honest test is not what they did in dollars, but what they did against the chain they split from.
How it's calculated
Daily closes for each asset from its listing date. The primary chart divides each fork's price by Bitcoin's on the same day; the second indexes all four to 100 in dollars from their common start. Volatility is 30-day realized, annualised.
What it did in past cycles
Measured against Bitcoin from their common start, every fork has lost almost everything: Bitcoin Cash roughly −96%, Bitcoin SV roughly −98%, and Bitcoin Gold effectively −100%.
The dollar figures are no kinder. Bitcoin Cash peaked near $3,900 in December 2017 and Bitcoin Gold near $450 in the same month; Bitcoin SV peaked around $440. All three are down more than 94% from those peaks, and Bitcoin Gold by more than 99.9%.
The listing record is its own finding. Of the major venues in our data store, Bitcoin Cash still trades on two, Bitcoin SV on one, and Bitcoin Gold on none — the fork that fell furthest is also the one no longer carried anywhere we track.
What it doesn't tell you
Price is not the only measure of a protocol, and none of these numbers say anything about the technical merits of larger blocks or any other disputed change. What they measure is where the market went.
The store also carries no volume for these series, so an illiquid market and an active one look identical here. That matters most for Bitcoin Gold, whose volatility figure is measuring the absence of a market rather than the behaviour of one — its closes have swung by several hundred percent in single days, which is what happens when almost nothing trades.
Reading it with other metrics
Bitcoin dominance is the same contest over the whole asset class rather than just the forks, and it bottomed at 32.1% in January 2018 — the moment the alternatives looked most credible.
Hard money covers why the supply rule is the thing being defended, which is what the fork disputes were ultimately about.
Bitcoin, by the numbers
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